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Ilfov ( ) is the county that
surrounds Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It
used to be largely rural, but after the fall of communism, many of the county's villages and
communes developed into high-income commuter towns, which act like
suburbs or satellites of Bucharest. The gentrification of the county is
continuing, with many towns in Ilfov, such as Otopeni, having some
of the highest GDP per capita levels in the country.

Demographics

It has a population (excluding Bucharest) of 300,123. The
population density is 188 per km². 40% of the population commutes and works
in Bucharest, although in recent years, many industrial plants
were built outside Bucharest, in Ilfov county. It has an
annual growth of about 4%.

Neighbours

Economy

The base occupation used to be the agriculture. Nowadays, due to the
economical growth in Bucharest, many companies have opened their offices,
production facilities or warehouses in the nearby villages,
situated in the Ilfov County, thus making it the most developed
county in Romania.

The thick forests were useful for retreat during the migration age
because they were not easy to cross on horseback. In fact, the name
of the forest means "the Forests of the Vlachs" (Romanians), a name given by the Slavs who
inhabited the nearby plains.

The
county was named after the Ilfov River
and it is of Slavic origin, being composed from "Ilf" (a name?) and
suffix "-ov" and it appears for the first time in a 1482 donation act of voivode Vlad Călugărul to the monastery of
Snagov.

Administrative divisions

The county has 8 towns and 32 communes.

There
were serious debates about the city level awarded to Voluntari, as it is alleged that it was given in regard to
the city's political affiliation, rather than population,
development or any other objective features. Despite this,
Voluntari does have a population of 30,000, and many other
localities with this population have been given city-status in the
past.

Before 1972, it used to be one of the largest
counties of Romania, but parts of it were added to neighbouring
counties and nowadays it is the smallest (excluding the city of
Bucharest, which has a special status). Between 1981 and 1997, it
was called "Sectorul Agricol Ilfov" and it was not a separate
county, but subordinate to the capital.

Ilfov County has no capital. Most of the county's institutions are
located in Bucharest, some being located in Otopeni, others in
Buftea. There is a struggle for both towns to be named county
capital, one boasting its development and resources (Otopeni has
the biggest income per capita in Romania and the biggest airport in
the country), the other population and surface. This rivalry is
fairly recent, since Ilfov used to be mainly rural and relatively
poor in the past decades, and therefore Bucharest was seen as its
main administrative centre. Nowadays, with a unique political
identity being given to Ilfov, an identity that is separate to
Bucharest, it is likely that a fixed capital city will be
determined for Ilfov. Buftea is the most
likely candidate because it is further from Bucharest and less
associated with the city, whereas Otopeni is commonly
seen as a suburb of Bucharest, and it would therefore be
problematic to have the capital so close to the national capital,
Bucharest.

However, in 2005, some plans were proposed that would merge
Bucharest with 90 other communes located to up to 40 km
outside the city, in Ilfov County and other nearby counties into a
"metropolitan area" of
Bucharest.